“I zingari rendono più della droga” (Gypsies earn more that drugs).
These are the words used by the boss Salvatore Buzzi, intercepted by the police in the setting of the investigation “Mafia capitale”, that overwhelmed Rome's municipality in 2015: they give a clear image of a typical italian paradox. 180.000 Roms and Sintas lives in Italy, that correspond only to the 0,25% of the whole population but are perceived by Italians as a bigger menace also because they are continuously made object of political controversy, often used to gain easy consensus. Among them, only 40.000 are living in documented disadvantage and secluded in the so called “nomad camps”: areas created as a temporary and emergency solution and that in the past 20 years instead feed a spiral of corruption and bad management that not only not solved the problem of the integration of Roms and Sintas populations, but gave Italy the sad European record for intolerance and hate.
One fifth of the total Rom population living in documented disadvantage is concentrated in the city of Rome, almost 8.000 people living in the “nomad camps”, so called because for at least 2.000 years people of romanì language were nomadic: hailing from India, they have always have been skilled artisans in metal crafting, carousel owners, horse breeders, so far as hated and oppressed.
